Freed from his duties managing The Wonders (neé The Oneders), Tom Hanks — who has already definitively chronicled World War II, AIDs, space, 9/11, World War II again, volcanoes, and Meg Ryan’s vagina in his various projects — is bringing that unique Playtone feel to a different, lighter project: a movie about JFK getting shot in the head.

OR SO THEY WANT YOU TO THINK.

Playtone principals Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman are set to produce Parkland, an indie drama about the assassination of John F. Kennedy that will mark the directorial debut of scribe Peter Landesman.

Pic chronicles the events leading up to JFK’s assassination and Abraham Zapruder’s famous documentation of the event. (Via)

And the movie topic’s only competition is JFK, that one episode of The X-Files, that other episode of Seinfeld, The Murder of JFK: A Revisionist History, The JFK Assassination: The Jim Garrison Tapes, Who Shot President Kennedy?, and about a hundred other titles. Isn’t it time we’ve moved onto another assassination? A house painter once tried to shoot Andrew Jackson. That could make for an interesting film. Ditto the salon keeper, John Flammang Schrank, who tried to take down the Bull Moose, Theodore Roosevelt. Or if you want to go abroad, base a movie on the first man to be assassinated by a firearm, James Stewart, 1st Earl of Moray.

Didn’t Watchmen already answer the question of who shot JFK? It was Jeffrey Dean Morgan, dammit.

I once read a story about Teddy Roosevelt giving a speech while suffering from a bullet wound. That’s awesome.

I’m not one to go all conspiracy theory, but in the case of Lincoln’s assassin, or Adams’, both were apprehended and there was no doubt about how they did it (close range). JFK still intrigues because we still can’t really say that we know for sure what happened. The official story is riddled with more plot holes and inconsistencies than Nolan’s Batman trilogy…

Yeah, something in his pocket stopped the bullet. He opened his coat to show everyone that he’d been shot and was bleeding, but told them all to stay calm and ending up speaking for another hour or something like that. Teddy was quite the showman.